Thursday, 30 January 2014

The question arises: are white Torontonians supportive of the immigration system now knowing that the inevitable outcome of it would be the reduction of its historic, traditional white population to a mere 37% by 2031 and steadily deceasing after that?

I doubt it.

Oh well, at least it will help them relate better to the native population becoming, in a sense, the new natives. The main difference being Canada's indigenous population had colonialism imposed on them where whites invited it, having failed to learn from history and thus becoming the colonized by their own hands and stupidity.

It sums up nicely the unspoken costs the immigration system imposes on Canadians. I will also add the environmental costs such as loss of arable land due to urban sprawl and loss of green spaces in our urban centers. This is to say nothing of gridlock, higher density, and the overall lowering of the collective quality of life in the nation's major cities that mass immigration brings with it. The alleged benefits of the immigration system don't nearly cover the costs it demands and creates.

Big cities also attract more young people and recent immigrants, who tend to have higher unemployment rates. As a result, Toronto’s population growth is outstripping its ability to create jobs.

So it is possible to grow your population beyond its capacity to create jobs. Who knew? But immigration is supposed to increase economic activity and by implication create jobs, or so we're told. I guess all those immigrants enriching Toronto with their colourful cultures and unique languages forgot to bring the job growth with them.

Speaking of which Ottawa plans to double the number of foreign students to be educated at Canadian universities. I don't have a problem with this on the conditions that 1) spaces allocated to Canadians are not surrendered to accommodate foreign students (and the higher tuition they pay) consequently denying Canadians access to higher education, and 2) these foreign students return to their respective countries to better their lives there, to build their communities, and help provide a better life for their countrymen with the education they received in Canada. This is more effective than foreign aid. Since it can't be guaranteed these conditions will be met I'm apprehensive.

If we permit these foreign students to stay then we're not just attracting the best and the brightest but poaching the developing world of its best and brightest. And they need them more than we because Canada is the world's most educated country. Letting foreign students stay in Canada after graduation will just saturate further an already over-educated labour market.

Now, about that "expat Sri Lankan Tamil goes back to her home country only to find out that claims of persecution are fabricated or overblown" thing. It appears the harassment that NDP MP and parliamentarian mouthpiece for the Sri Lankan Tamil independence movement in Ottawa, Rathika Sitsabaiesan, is more exaggeration than cause for concern. Sure, there was some official observation of her visit from Sri Lanka's government in Colombo. I can buy that. But from what I read it appears it's mostly nuisance making on Colombo's part and histrionics from Sitsabaiesan.

Her whole visit was political whether she cares to admit it or not. At first it was reported that she was there on a "fact finding" mission which means find biased information to embarrass the government in Colombo and for this she was allegedly placed under house arrest. Only she wasn't placed under house arrest. She was just followed around by men on bikes as she visited family and friends and that scared her so she hid in her hotel room and sought Canadian consular protection and oh my god I'm so persecuted they're going to take me away and kill me!

How could Colombo win? If the Sri Lankan government left her alone she could wander around Sri Lanka unmolested and find "proof" that Sri Lanka's Tamil minority are being persecuted. If government agents followed her, as they did, then, again that's proof Colombo is being mean to the Tamil minority and she could come back to Canada with the persecution story she went looking for. And that's what she got. It's all about optics. It's to make Colombo look bad while legitimizing the victim status of Sri Lanka's Tamils and validating their presence in Canada. And hopefully keep the asylum gates open to Sri Lanka's Tamils, a privilege they have enjoyed since 1989. It's good for her political career. More Sri Lankan Tamils in her electoral riding the more votes for her. Besides, if she was looking for a persecution story then I'd like to hear more about the forcible expulsion of some 72,000 Muslims by the LTTE from the Northern Province in 1990.

The irony is she proved why we should cut off Sri Lankan Tamils from entering the country as refugees (and repatriating the ones here) simply by going back to Sri Lanka and returning unscathed. She only got Colombo's attention because she is an elected MP from Canada. Were she just some anonymous Tamil returning to Sri Lanka on vacation I expect nothing would have happened to her. Any honest Sri Lankan Tamil living in Scarborough, ON will tell you that. If not, then it's curious why they frequently return to a country that allegedly puts their lives in danger.

This is joke and an embarrassment for this country. It's embarrassing enough that Canada allowed itself to be the mark of a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee con game (making Canada home to the largest collection of Sri Lankan Tamils in the world outside of Sri Lanka) but how we're letting the petty ethnic politics of that insignificant country seep into the affairs of Ottawa. It appears this Sitsabaiesan woman is going to waste parliament's time and tax payer money advancing the cause of her people in our nation's capital when she should be focusing her attention on issues that affect all Canadians. That's what we expect from our politicians, not to be leading the charge for an independence movement in a country most Canadians couldn't locate on a map.